That 20 year war I mentioned was a long time coming. We were already on bad terms with our enemy; somehow, finding AquaCell took a shitty situation and made it worse.
The second it was announced, the Leader of the Westlands, Casen Moore, used AquaCell as an incentive for an unified Athena. He contacted the North, South and East, led by General Bernadette Lewis, Matriarch Omarra Blanke, and Leader of the East, Kota Ra-Morn.
They were all wary of this proposal -- only Moore went in optimistic.
General Lewis was tired of every peace talk failing, and didn’t want to go through another war if this one fell through, because she’d already been fighting one with a criminal organization that rose in the North. And it was a war she was losing.
The Matriarch was right there with her, in both wariness and reason, but still had some hope in making the alliance work. She had to, because she didn’t trust AquaCell. The South never received any of it, and because of it, her civil war took more out of her people than the crime war took out of Bernie’s.
And Kota? Didn’t trust Westlanders in general. Almost every war the East has ever fought has been with us, so the animosity was expected. Moore wanted to bury the hatchet, like our last leader did to end the second world war in 1535.
He did, surprisingly. And it worked for a while. But I guess we were due for a few more murders.
AC’s popularity was climbing fast, and so was the demand. Eventually, even with mass production sites, it got to the point where it was being strained. Moore didn’t want our holy grail to burn out before we got a “real” chance to exploit it, so he halted distribution efforts until our supply was out of the red.
Problem was, the North and South had emergencies. This was known before the meeting was even held. So most of our efforts were focused on them. Even the East wanted stability for them, and we've had a lot of joint military efforts to attest that.
Those efforts required LOT of AC resources -- It was one of the reasons for Moore making that decision. By the time their situations got stabilized, we ended up running out of resources to grant the East.
Now, that on its own wasn’t gonna set off a war. They were there when our proverbial wells ran dry, and knew why they ran out -- they weren’t gonna call us on that. But there are always people -- in any world -- who get off on manipulation. Events like these? Sort of like gasoline; it usually takes one match. In this case, there were several.
There are a lot of influential people who profit from the wrong wars, or just don’t want to see it unified. And they’re in a lot of ears. I think it’s safe to say that at least one of them was in Kota’s, because he retracted his stance on our decision to withhold AC almost as quickly as he gave it. Went public with it, too, so you can guess how the people reacted; torn in two, some understanding, some angered. None of them really knew what was happening on our side until Moore told them.
‘Course, given our history, no one in the East believed him until he made due on his promises. AquaCell shipped over to the East in regular quantity once the North and South had been stabilized. He even issued an apology along with it.
Once that was done, Moore and Kota decided to bury the hatchet -- again -- publicly. In 1980, Moore went to the East, met with Kota in Loryn, and shook hands in front of eighty-thousand people.
Kota’s hand was still firmly gripped on Moore’s when what was left of his head decorated the Eastland flag.
No one found the shooter. That made people paranoid and angry. Didn’t take long for the Eastlanders to pin the blame on the West.
And it wasn’t just that country that reacted. When news got to the North, Bernie pulled all support from unification efforts, and declared her country independent. And when she dropped out, it forced Omarra to drop out too. At the time, the North were the only ones with a military presence in the South, and their joint defense against the ongoing civil war was the only thing keeping the chaos there at bay.
To put it in perspective, not long after they took off, Omarra’s forces lost an entire city to an ice storm. That never ended. And it wasn’t gradual, either; happened in an instant. None of the residents of Osiris knew what was coming, and I imagine they never will.
Now, you can’t go near the city’s borders without getting frostbite, can’t step into it without freezing completely, and even if you manage that, without the proper equipment, you’re likely to die of hypothermia in seconds.
Moore, being the guy he was, did everything he could to aid both countries in the crisis. Omarra believed he deserved penance for what happened, Bernie stopped communications with everyone completely, and the Eastlanders would sooner kill him than accept his help. He decided to try and work past it.
For Omarra, he sent soldiers in to bolster the line in the South, and some of his best scientists and engineers to try and counteract the ice storm. For the North, he met with the natives that didn’t share Bernie’s sentiment of the world, and coordinated efforts to combat the criminal activity there. For the East, Moore reached out to the few citizens there that didn’t believe he’d assassinate Ra-Morn, and had a hand in funding nearly everything that went into their recovery. That was kept in the dark -- If the Eastlanders knew Moore still had a presence there, it would’ve fucked things up more than it already was.
It was a slow process, but it would’ve worked, if not for Ra-Morn’s “replacement,” Xavier Hallscott. The man was an unwitting puppet for the Eastland military, and spouted hate to fuel hate. Give their military a “tangible reason” for going to war.
Their increasing hatred of the Westlands, dangerous as it was, still wasn’t enough to start a war. And the culprits knew it.
That’s when shit got out of hand.
Terrorist acts started up in both countries, that kept increasing in yield and severity. It was a game of one-upmanship, and we were all suffering through it. Moore eventually realized that whoever was perpetrating these attacks held no real authority in either country, ‘cause neither one knew who was committing them.
The manhunt he tried to sponsor to find that out fell through, since it would’ve required a worldwide effort, and no one trusted him. None of his contacts in the other countries reported back with good news either. And the official talks that he’d been having with their ambassadors did nothing but stagnate the issue.
The rest of the world was so focused on downplaying Moore’s attempts to rebuild what was broken that they were unprepared for what came next: the final match that started the fire.
New Valencia, a city in the Westlands, was struck by a satellite plasma cannon. Several of them, to be exact. Owned by security, commandeered by who we thought were the Eastlanders. We call the cannons Glassers, because someone remembered that sand, if burned hot enough, could be turned into glass. Thought it was a good fit.
No one living in New Valencia, or just outside its borders, survived the attack. The city itself was hot for a few weeks, but was more or less intact -- the glassers rarely affect anything that isn’t organic. But obviously, that wasn’t the concern.
Before anyone could even register that, Ra-Morn City -- which was in the East-- was blown to hell by two thousand caches of AquaCell powered explosives. And our signature was on it.
Two many lives were lost for either side to spin it, and our citizens -- the majority of them, anyway -- were far too angry to think clearly. They needed someone to blame, and the prime suspect was clear as day.
On the 25th of Hail, 1989, both armies received a call to arms, and headed for battle. The AquaCell War had begun.
The war -- fueled by what we thought was our saving grace -- claimed billions of Athen lives, and the spirits of thousands more. There were a lot of broken veterans that couldn’t live with themselves anymore. A few snapped. Most of them ended up dead long after the war was over.
Casen Moore didn’t survive. You know the expression “died of a broken heart?” The stress of it all made him ill. The hoops he had to jump through, the stonewalling, the hate, the terrorism, the genuine pleas for unity that went unanswered, the loss of life in an entire city. Giving the call to arms after putting all his heart into keeping the peace was just about the most soul crushing thing he ever had to do. Rumors say he refused treatment for his illness, and died at the foot of his bed shortly after the war started. Fact says, short of his closest friends, not a single person shed a tear for him.
He was succeeded by William Madsen Cove. A born and bred soldier. Patriot to the Westlands. War hero to many. Nightmare to everyone else.
It’s said his taking the helm is what won us the war. It’s also said that, if not for the soldiers serving directly under him -- guys like David Hoffman, Jacquelynn Gayle and Bei Liang, that we would’ve lost the fight with our conscience before we won it with our guns.
Then there’s the argument that we had more AquaCell than the East. Which was fact, but not a factor. Or that the reason the tide was turned was because the rest of the world started seeing the East as the antagonists.
Here’s the one thing everyone seems to agree on, though: the only reason Cove’s leadership was effective, Why Bei and the W.A.S.P influenced the war the way they did, why our quantity in AquaCell was believed to be a factor, or why Eastlanders ended up on the wrong side of history.
Everyone believed it was because of me. That I’m the hero of this story.
Do not believe a single fucking word of it.
If that were true, I’d have served in this war long before I was even born. I’d have had the intelligence and progressive thinking to build factions like W.A.S.P. I would’ve had the capacity to be a leader.
During that war -- no matter my rank -- all I was, was a grunt. I didn’t converse with people when I signed up, so short of revising my family history, they had no idea what I was about. I won’t lie and tell you that I was a terrible student, but top marks and good day on a battlefield don’t get you into programs like W.A.S.P. You need a voucher. And mine came in the form of my dead father’s reputation.
Additional training and bonding with the handful of operatives that made it in didn’t change me in the slightest; all I did was what I was told. Whatever mandate they gave me was fulfilled by any means necessary. I’ll give you time to fully understand what that means.
Doing this job...It’s sort of a double edged sword. You’re taught to retain your soul. You’re also taught all the ways you can possibly taint it. No exercise in this world can stop what killing thousands of men in a hundred different ways will do to your soul -- The only way to save it is to lose it. Especially on the battlefield.
The reason Cove is looked at with so much fear is the same reason I’m praised; our souls, our conscience -- whatever you want to call it...We both know how to turn it off.
In doing so, you lose your sense of right and wrong. Your own personal, war-tailored logic drives you. The only thing that matters is the mission.
Anyone that gets in the way of that becomes a casualty. They’re not always killed outright. And they’re not always guilty. I don’t know how many innocent lives I may or may not have taken...But I didn’t mourn them.
I didn’t mourn anyone.
They were to me what an unmarked grave is to anyone: cold and forgotten.
You tell me: Do I sound like a hero to you?
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